


Dear Dr. Holtzmann

by riseuplikeangels



Category: Ghostbusters (2016), Ghostbusters - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Sweet Kisses, holtzmann is a lesbian advice columnist basically, what a role model
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 07:14:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7791880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riseuplikeangels/pseuds/riseuplikeangels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jillian Holtzmann has been getting an awful lot of letters at the firehouse. Erin knows that a moral woman doesn't snoop, but...she just can't help herself. </p>
<p>Or: the one where tiny queer girls write letters to Holtz, and Holtz writes them all back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dear Dr. Holtzmann

**Author's Note:**

> i. THIS HAS BEEN IN MY HEAD FOR AGES  
> ii. if i had had a character like holtz when i was 12 (let alone a real person) my life probably would have gone very differently  
> iii. there's a brief lil mention of suicide/self-harm in one of the letters holtz gets  
> iv. if you're reading this i love you

The first letter comes to the fire station on a Wednesday morning, grey and rainy. Along with a few random magazines and a journal that Erin’s subscribed to, there’s a lilac little envelope with a Forever stamp and a New York City return address. “Dr. Jillian Holtzmann” is written in a messy hand above the fire station’s address, and so Erin goes up to her lab and lays it on top of her keyboard, so she’ll see it. **  
**

She wonders who it’s from, though not for all that long. She and Abby are close to a breakthrough, a new method of detection that goes into an earpiece, as opposed to another instrument to carry around, and she hurries back to their workspace as soon as possible. She’s already flipping her goggles back over her eyes, and the letter is forgotten in a mess of code and wiring.

* * *

The second letter comes to the fire station on Friday morning of the same week. The clouds have blown over, but the humidity remains. This one is in a tiny white envelope, the size of a sticky note, and Erin carries it carefully up to Holtzmann’s desk. Again she wonders. These are clearly handwritten notes, and they look like they’re done by young people at that. This envelope in Erin’s hand has a few unicorn stickers on the back, making sure the flap stays closed. She delivers it, and it sticks in her mind as she works through the Ghostbusters’ email inbox. 

* * *

The letters keep coming. Erin checks the mailbox daily and there’s usually a letter or two for Holtz, which she dutifully carries up to her workstation. Sometimes she’s there, sometimes she’s not, but even when she is Erin can’t seem to get up the courage to ask her colleague who’s writing the letters and why. What she does know, though, is that Holtzmann always seems happy to get them. Her face lights up in this peculiar little way, and Erin can hear her opening them as soon as she turns away and starts back down the stairs to the first floor.

She’s burning with curiosity, but she stays quiet.

* * *

One day, ten letters come in the mailbox, and Erin has had it up to _here._ She takes the whole stack of envelopes (in every pastel shade) up to the engineer’s desk, only to find her absent; probably getting lunch, or out scavenging for new materials. She continues to scavenge even though the mayor’s office provides them with whatever they ask for. Erin guesses it must be out of habit, or maybe it relaxes her in some odd way.

Regardless, Holtz is away. And as Erin places the letters on top of one of her computer monitors, she realizes that there are a few letters from the day before open on her desk, and a legal pad and pen positioned next to them. She can recognize Holtzmann’s loopy handwriting on the legal pad, but the letters are all in different hands.

Erin is a moral woman. She knows she shouldn’t snoop.

As she thinks _I shouldn’t snoop,_ though, she’s already started snooping, picking up the shortest of the letters first.

* * *

_Dear Dr. Holtzmann,_

_My name is Molly and I’m ten years old. I’m writing because I saw you on TV when you caught a ghost and you talked about how you loved science, and I love science too! My daddy says that science is a boy thing and he doesn’t like that I joined robotics club at school but it makes me really happy so I’m going to keep doing it anyway. My sister also says you’re amazing but she won’t write you because she’s nervous. She is gay and I think she has a crush on you but I don’t know ‘cause I’m only ten. We watch all the videos that you’re in with the Ghostbusters on YouTube together. I want to work at CERN just like you did when I grow up and do experiments with the Large Hadron Collider. I also want to be a chemist and maybe a veterinarian on the side._

_Love,  
Molly Herbert_

* * *

_Dear Dr. Holtzmann,_

_I saw you marching at Pride with the Manhattan LGBT Community Center and I just wanted to say how grateful I am that you exist. I know that sounds silly and really fangirly, but it’s true. I just came out as bisexual to my parents and they don’t really understand it. I love wearing crazy outfits and doing my hair in funny ways and they just don’t know why I won’t dress like a lady. I’m almost eighteen, they say. I should be learning how to dress “professionally.” It’s just really validating to see someone who’s doing the work she loves and who looks and talks like you do. I love seeing you in interviews on TV and stuff. I hope this isn’t creepy, but I also think you’re really beautiful. :)_

_Divya Ramkumar_

* * *

_Dear Dr. Holtzmann,_

_Your guest lecture at the public library near where I live stopped me from killing myself. I was looking on the computers for ways to do it and I heard you speaking. You were talking about the way it feels to have machines run under your hands and to know you’ve made something that can outlast you, how that feels purposeful and powerful. I don’t know why it struck me like it did. I called my therapist and now I’ve gone almost forty-three days without cutting. Thank you._

_[unsigned]_

* * *

_Dear Dr. Holtzmann,_

_I’m in love with my best friend and we’re both girls. I thought that I just thought she was pretty because she is, but then one night at a sleepover we were playing truth or dare and someone dared her to kiss me and she did and it was really soft. I can’t stop thinking about it._

_I don’t know why I’m writing you. I guess because you’re one of the only lesbians I know, and I don’t even really know you, I just see you on TV sometimes. Maybe because I don’t know if you’ll even read it and I just want to talk to someone that might understand._

_I want to like boys so bad. My best friend talks about the boys she likes all the time and she always asks me who I like, and I make up names because I just don’t like any. If I liked boys, then it would be so much easier. I watch a lot of romantic movies because I want to feel like those women feel. One time I accidentally watched this movie called Imagine Me and You and I got a lot of funny feelings in my stomach when I saw the two girls kissing. I wish I could just like boys. I wish I could stop being in love with my best friend. Do you know if it’s possible to start liking boys? If it’s not, how do I be a lesbian? I never thought about it before. Did you have to tell your parents? Did your friends hate you? I’m afraid my friends will hate me. Especially my best friend. Please write me back if you read this._

_Ayana Huarez_

* * *

Erin, whose throat is feeling tight, puts down the letters. God, she had had no idea. Of _course_ , she knows that Holtzmann is gay; that’s as obvious as the nose on her face. Even if she wasn’t the type to make jokes about it every five seconds. She had pretty much singlehandedly pushed Erin to realize her own bisexuality. But Erin had never imagined that she did anything like this, and it’s in that moment that she realizes how little she knows about Holtzmann’s personal life, what she does outside of her lab work.

It makes her heart hurt, because she wants to know. She wants to know _everything_ about Jillian Holtzmann.

She looks at the legal pad, on which is drafted a response.

* * *

_Dear Ayana,_

_I’m so glad that you wrote me a letter, because I know how hard it is not having anyone to talk to about this kind of stuff. Can you believe that the Ghostbusters are the first people that I feel really, really comfortable talking to? Sometimes it takes a while, but even I managed to find people who understand. And if you’ve seen me on TV you know I’m pretty weird._

_I think that only you can tell yourself who you like and who you don’t. For me, it wasn’t possible to start liking boys. I tried for a little while and it didn’t feel good. It feels a lot better for me to say that I’m gay. I love being gay, even though it took me a while to get there. As for how to be a lesbian, the simple answer is that there’s no right way! (That’s also probably pretty discouraging, but hey, it’s true.) The great thing about being gay is you get to be exactly who you are, and you get to be something super special and beautiful as well. Look at our movies! They’re so much better than straight-people movies. Imagine Me and You happens to be one of my favorites._

_Telling my parents was about as scary as the first time I worked with radioactive material. But unlike my encounter with radioactive material, my eyebrows didn’t even get singed. I didn’t have that many friends when I was figuring myself out, but I know that if your friends are really there for you through anything, then they’ll understand and support you if you come out to them._

_As for being in love with your best friend, well, sometimes that never goes away. Between you and me (don’t go running to the presses!) I have a crush on one of my best friends, too, and I haven’t even kissed her. It’s definitely hard, because you don’t want to mess up a friendship. I don’t have all the answers, but if you want to write me again, absolutely do._

_Dr. J. Holtzmann_

* * *

“What are you doing?”

The words aren’t sharp, particularly, but there’s an edge in Holtzmann’s voice. Erin jumps so badly she almost knocks over Holtz’s desk lamp, and is immediately stammering.

“I’m sorry, I’m...they were here, and I was curious, and I know I shouldn’t have looked but you get so many letters and I just...I wanted to know what they were for and I should have asked you, I know...”

“Erin, if you wanted to know, yeah, you should have just asked.” Holtzmann slinks back up to her desk, one hand in her pocket, the other carrying a bag from the bodega round the corner, presumably with a sandwich or something inside it. “But it’s fine. I do some stuff at the centers, I tell counselors they can give out the address. Girls write me, I write them back. It’s like I’m a neurotic lesbian advice columnist, or something!”

_Neurotic lesbian advice columnist._ Erin, so close to tears, can’t help but laugh. “It’s so sweet, what they write you,” she says, gesturing to the letters spread out on the desk.

Holtzmann picks one up, the one from Molly, smiling down fondly at the childish handwriting. “Yeah, it’s definitely affirming. Never had anyone like me when I was a kid. So I figure I gotta give back, you know?”

Now Erin is really choking ‘em down. “That’s amazing,” she manages, and it might be the most honest thing she’s ever said.

“One question, though...” Holtz draws out the one, picking up the dropped legal pad, running one of her fingers down the page. “Did you read this?”

“Um. Yeah. I did.”

_“Damn._ Not exactly the confession I’d pictured.” Holtzmann throws the pad back on the desk, puts up her hands in exasperation. “Fate intervenes at the most inconvenient times, am I right?”

Something is fluttering hard in Erin’s midriff; her pulse is elevated, and she twirls a strand of hair around her finger. One of her little nervous actions. “The...best friend?” she asked. “That you said you have a crush on?”

The engineer nods, and though her features remain unreadable, Erin can see the hint of a flush on her cheeks. “Guilty as charged. Woulda told you more creatively and probably like six months from now.”

“Oh.” Erin gets it. _“Oh.”_

“Look, don’t be weird about it, I’ll just...keep my distance, if you want, I don’t want to make things awkw--”

Which is when Erin steps forward and kisses her.

It’s not graceful. Their noses bump and Erin forgets to breathe before it so she ends up taking this shuddery inhale against Holtzmann’s mouth, and the engineer doesn’t even move for a long few seconds before finally, finally her hand comes up and cups the nape of Erin’s neck to pull her closer. Erin’s heart flutters like a goddamned teenager’s and she’s kissing Holtz for long, long moments until the two of them separate, looking into each other’s eyes.

“I,” Holtzmann says, then seems to forget how to speak. 

“You have to edit the letter,” Erin murmurs.

“What?”

“The letter.” She skims her fingers across it, lying discarded on the other woman’s desk. “You...said you’d never kissed me.”

Holtzmann looks at her, and after a full few seconds, bursts out laughing. “Right you are, Dr. Gilbert. I guess now I have.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! this is short and silly and frankly not up to my usual standards but i just wanted to get this lil idea out there. <3


End file.
